


the worst you can do

by Flamingbluepanda



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Angst without a happy ending, Body Horror, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, OR IS IT, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27800956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flamingbluepanda/pseuds/Flamingbluepanda
Summary: (in which hanahaki is genetic, exclusivity is not implied, and friends with benefits don’t say the L word)
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 7
Kudos: 55





	the worst you can do

**Author's Note:**

> mind the tags on this one. Thanks to Nik for the beta and for asking me to break her heart. Dedicated to the guy in wawa who asked me if his mask made him look fat and laughed with me. I hope you have a good life, green beanie dude.

Ianto remembers being a little kid and watching his tad choke on his beer, coughing up petals.

Hanahaki runs in his family; he’d already known that. His paternal uncle died choking on the same harebells his dad produced for his mom. He  _ doesn’t  _ understand why his tad is suddenly suffering the condition until two days later when his mom gets her schizo diagnosis, and Ianto realizes that just because you're married to someone doesn’t mean they love you. 

His tad’s condition comes and goes with his mum’s - when she stops taking her meds and forgets who he is, his tad starts choking again. And then one day he doesn’t, because he is too drunk and too angry to love anyone, including his wife and  _ especially  _ Ianto.

_ Someday, _ Ianto thinks, nine years old and holding a towel to his bleeding head as his best friend bicycles him to the nearest hospital,  _ I’m going to love someone enough that they never forget it. _

* * *

The first time he chokes on petals, it's a mix of orange roses and poinsettias. The orange roses fade as Ianto realizes Kieran from security isn’t into him, leaving him with poinsettias and  _ Lisa Lisa Lisa.  _

Lisa Hallet loves him, laughs when he tells her about the Hanahaki, and says that at least now he knows what flowers to buy her when she’s angry. 

He proposes two weeks before Canary Wharf, and after…

Well, he’s a little scared after. But he’ll make it work; he has to make it work. People do things for the people they love; that’s how  _ life  _ works.

So he goes back to Wales, goes to Cardiff, waits for an opportunity and wrangles a goddamn  _ dinosaur.  _

(Yes, he  _ does  _ feel particularly badass after that; thanks for asking.)

He meets Jack Harkness on a misty Cardiff night. He pulled out all the stops - taking down a Weevil, wearing tight jeans and his studded belt, and finally the dinosaur. 

He got the job, needless to say. 

* * *

Jack is… very nice to him. 

He was a little suspicious at first since Ianto was from Torchwood One and Jack distrusted Yvonne with a passion, but he warmed quickly. 

He trusts Ianto. Probably  _ too  _ much, considering that Ianto is lying to his face. 

Ianto is very tired of that part. 

He loves Lisa, he still loves Lisa so  _ much,  _ but she… she isn’t doing well. 

It’s fine. It’s all fine. Doctor Tanizaki will fix her, and it’ll all be  _ fine- _

And he keeps telling himself that until the day of, when Ianto coughs up a poinsettia. 

Ianto viscerally remembers his tad coughing up harebells for his mum, because she didn’t love him anymore. She forgot she loved him because of the schizo and the abuse, and  _ it is fine.  _ The doctor will fix Lisa. The doctor will bring her back to him.

He keeps coughing up blood-red petals. Then Lisa dies, and it stops. 

Ianto, nonsensically, misses it. 

* * *

He sends Jack to an alien slave world, a few weeks later. He deserves it, Ianto reasons; he needs to learn that he can’t just shoot whoever he pleases.

Besides, he saves him afterward; Jack’s fine. 

He’s  _ fine,  _ actually. Ianto knows this. 

Because he sleeps with him.

It’s just infatuation, he decides; it won’t happen again.

He says this stubbornly, even as he coughs up a petal he’s never seen before. It’ll pass when the infatuation does.

* * *

( _ Aurora lilies, Jack explains excitedly when one falls through the Rift a week before the children stop. “My mom used to grow them. They change color in the sun and turn purple in the moon.” _

_ The one Jack gets from the Rift dies within a week, sick as it was. Jack gets stupidly sad about it, Ianto comforts him, and it’s all stupid and pointless, and God, if Jack can love a plant so much why can’t he love Ianto the same way?) _

* * *

Only it doesn’t. 

Sometimes, Ianto thinks about their files on the fae, about how they placed rose petals in people’s throats, and wonders what his ancestors did to piss off the Underhill so severely. 

Jack gets sent back in time, and Owen finds out about the flowers when he catches Ianto choking on a bloody purple triangle. 

“You’re in love with him,” Owen mocks. “You  _ love  _ Jack Harkness, the untouchable man. What sad, pathetic wet dreams do you  _ have,  _ Ianto?”

Ianto enjoys shooting him a little  _ too  _ much. 

* * *

Ianto doesn’t have a single flower the whole time Jack is dead and, hey, now he knows why his chest gets tight the way it did after Lisa, because Jack can  _ die,  _ and  _ come back,  _ and he is  _ never  _ going to pick Ianto out of the thousands of partners he could have. 

When Jack disappears  _ again,  _ Owen looks at him with pity and suggests tea with honey for the ache in his throat. 

* * *

Ianto has to usher Jack out of the cubicle room they’re in after Jack asks him on a date because he can  _ feel  _ the flowers crawling up his throat and he’s hid it from Jack  _ so  _ far. 

He gets a whole bloom out this time. He’ll start getting roots soon, thank God, these… whatever flowers they are, thank  _ God,  _ they don’t have thorns. 

Ianto knows how the condition works. He knows that the closer you get, the worse the condition is. But Ianto can’t tell Jack he loves him, because Jack won’t say it back. 

Denial literally kills, with the flowers. They’ll root in his lungs, and he’ll die.

So. That’s fun.

* * *

For a few weeks after Tommy and  _ that kiss,  _ Ianto thinks that maybe, maybe having someone say that they want to  _ stay  _ is enough.

After all, isn't that more important in the end? Who  _ cares  _ if someone says they love you? What’s the point if they don’t  _ stay?  _

That’s all Ianto wants. He just wants someone who stays. 

And worst of all, Jack wants that too. Jack wants someone who can be with him forever, and Ianto can’t give him that. He is selfish, selfish and a hypocrite. How can he ask Jack for  _ anything  _ when Jack needs so much more, deserves so much  _ better.  _

“Never leave me,” Jack will whisper in his ear sometimes, when Ianto lies next to him in Jack’s bunk, wrapped up tight in Jack’s solid arms. “Don’t ever leave me, Ianto.” 

And Ianto will lie, say he won’t, and cough up a flower afterwards. 

* * *

He starts coughing up roots to go with the flowers after Serenity Plaza. 

Hearing Jack say he loves him, hearing him call Ianto pet names and tease Ianto about being boyfriends, it’s  _ too much.  _

The roots rip at his throat, come up with little pink chunks of flesh tangled in them, and it  _ hurts,  _ it hurts so much he  _ cries.  _ Owen has to start giving him a horrible-tasting syrup, something that coats his esophagus and windpipe and protects it from the roots trying to kill him. 

He distances himself from Jack after the wedding. One last dance, and then he makes himself stop inviting Jack places. He tells Gwen about Flat Holm not just because she needs to know, but because if Jack left  _ him,  _ maybe it would hurt less.

Jack just comes back after showing Gwen the island and clings to him for  _ hours.  _ Ianto’s resistance crumples like a house of cards. 

* * *

“I’m glad it wasn’t you,” Jack whispers between sobs after Tosh and Owen, and Ianto decides that if he has to die, dying telling Jack he loves him isn’t so bad.

* * *

“I love you!” Jack screams as the Good Thinking virus eats away at him. “I love you, and I want to kill you!” 

“You already are,” Ianto whispers, and coughs hard enough that he throws up. 

* * *

By the time the children stop and the Hub blows up, Ianto owns an emergency inhaler, and Gwen and Rhys both know. 

Gwen helps him hide it from Jack, Rhys says that Ianto should just open his mouth and speak, and honestly, as he listens to Jack  _ scream  _ as he’s encased in concrete, Ianto decides he will. 

And he does  _ try.  _ World’s ending, never know what might happen. Later, Ianto tries to beat Rhys with the saucepan he cooked the beans in, and Rhys has the gall to  _ laugh,  _ that twat.

Jack declares that they’re going to stand up to them, a look in his eye begging for Ianto’s approval. 

Maybe, just maybe, after all this is over, Ianto will say it, and Jack will say it back. 

He clings to that hope as he walks inside Thames House. 

* * *

“I love you,” Ianto sobs out, choking, always choking. 

“Don’t!” Jack shakes his head, and oh,  _ that’s  _ what it feels like when the flowers completely block your windpipe. 

Ianto spits out flowers, wanting to say something else, anything else, but Jack is staring at the flowers for the first time, recognizing. 

“Are those-” Jack inhales sharply. “Ianto,  _ wait!” _

Jack will never forget this. Ianto dies with that last bit of knowledge in his chest, rooted right along with the flowers. 

* * *

  
  


(UNIT does an autopsy on him later, and the mortician tells one Martha Smith-Jones that she’s never seen a thicker bundle of roots and dead flowers in someone’s lungs, that whoever this deadman loved must’ve been loved quite a lot.)

**Author's Note:**

> www.flamingbluepanda.tumblr.com.
> 
> im sorry, I love you


End file.
